Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Men are a women's 'issue'

If Mr. Obama wanted to actually do something significant for American's women and girls, he would have created instead a White House Council on Men and Boys.

Just imagine the estrogen-induced response to something so sexist as a council chartered to address the concerns of one gender over another. Oh, wait. That's what this is.

But anyway, his is a council to address the issues of women and girls, so of course it is entirely fair.

Actually, I'm the mother of three girls, and I happen to think Mr. Obama's new council won't win the battle of the sexes. That's because the best thing anyone can do for American women and girls is to encourage men and boys to “man up.”

A council on men and boys would promote stable marriage as the best avenue to improve the lives and living conditions of America's women and families. A council on men and boys would address the crisis in American manhood that results in the scourge of infidelity, divorce, lack of commitment and fatherhood with multiple partners.

At first, I thought this was a positive piece on men, but no, just a hit piece on how men are pigs and should support women. If Ms. Hicks wonders why men have no interest in a "stable marriage," or commitment, she need only look as far as her own dripping disdain for men and her lack of insight into a culture that holds men responsible, portrays women as victims, and then sets up a "council" to correct a problem that women spend over 30 years in the making. A council on women is about expanding their opportunities. A council on men is about controlling them.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Help Save Amy Alkon's column in the Orange County Register

Amy Alkon writes to let me know that her columns, which emphasize fairness to men, will be let go from the Orange County Register unless readers express support for them:

In a world where domestic violence against men is laughed off -- while Mary Winkler blows her husband away and gets away with it...where there's rampant paternity fraud...where men are bled dry in court proceedings that take away access to their children...where men are squeezed out of opportunities (thanks to women-only and minority fellowships in the name of righting discrimination)...where selfish women feel free to become "single mothers by choice," when piles of data show that children need daddies to have a good shot in life...and on and on...I use science and reason -- presented with humor -- to put out a column that is fair to men. In fact, because I'm so outraged by the rampant discrimination I see against men, it's one of my main missions.

With such a dearth of writing out there doing that job, I think that alone is reason my column needs to remain in the Orange County Register.

Two things will save my column:

1. If enough people write to the Register to tell them it's a must-read for them. Write to Life@OCRegister.com

2. If people start reading it online as of Tuesday. The editor has conceded to me that it's been hard to find online (after readers wrote and told me the link was impossible to find).

More about my column: I work hard to make my column something you can't get anywhere else. I go to the same conferences and read the same journals as Ph.D.'s in psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology. A few of my other big influences: the late Albert Ellis (who was a fan of my work), Nathaniel Branden, John Gottman.

I get piles of mail from OC Reg readers every week, and I think my column is much more popular than they know because people have been reading it in the print edition only since it's been impossible to find online.

If you like and believe in my work, I hope you'll take action to keep my column in the Register -- both by writing to the editor and by starting to read me regularly at the permalink above. All the best,-Amy Alkon, advicegoddess.com

In you are so inclined, write and let them know how you feel or at least click through the link above so that the OC Register will get the gist that the columns are worthwhile. I know I will!

"Getting pregnant accidentally on purpose."

The author - single, 39-year-old Mary Pols - got pregnant as a result of unprotected sex on an ill-advised one-night stand, and the book is all about her emotional journey to single mumdom, not to mention her heroic attempts to forge some sort of relationship with the stranger who fathered her child.

In the book, she asks herself whether she conceived 'accidentally on purpose'. The sex in question, she insists, was purely for pleasure. But was there a secret agenda at work?

She was, after all, like the rest of us maturing singletons, in the last-chance saloon as far as her fertility was concerned. True love, marriage and all that was passing her by...

Some of these women approach the task in a far more ruthless manner than Mary Pols did, purposefully going out and sleeping with men when they know they are at their most fertile.

In America, they even have a name for this - they call them 'gotcha' pregnancies. Many of the women involved deliberately avoid birth control and have no intention of letting their unwitting bedfellow know this. ...

I love the way the author of the article blames men for women's manipulation and irresponsibility:

But, seriously, if a man takes a risk like that, he has to face the consequences. The woman, meanwhile, needs to make sure she has unprotected sex with the right kind of man.

Sorry, but if a woman plans a "Gotcha pregnancy"--shouldn't she get hit with the "Gotcha child support?" She took the responsiblity to do this, now she should pay for it. And don't give me the baloney about men being involved in the sex and therefore responsible. Men have few or no reproductive rights and were lied to about the birth control. Even if he used a condom and "took responsibility for birth control," a manipulative woman could get the condom out of the trash. I would hope that the man would feel that his child deserved to know him and to be treated well, but that should be his choice, not the state's decision.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Is Rand relevant?

Ayn Rand died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history.

There's a reason. In "Atlas," Rand tells the story of the U.S. economy crumbling under the weight of crushing government interventions and regulations. Meanwhile, blaming greed and the free market, Washington responds with more controls that only deepen the crisis. Sound familiar?

The novel's eerily prophetic nature is no coincidence. "If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society," Rand wrote elsewhere in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" "you can predict its course." Economic crises and runaway government power grabs don't just happen by themselves; they are the product of the philosophical ideas prevalent in a society -- particularly its dominant moral ideas.

While many people profess that Rand promotes unhealthy selfishness, that does not appear to be the case according to Brook:

The message is always the same: "Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good." But Rand said this message is wrong -- selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue. By this she did not mean exploiting others à la Bernie Madoff. Selfishness -- that is, concern with one's genuine, long-range interest -- she wrote, required a man to think, to produce, and to prosper by trading with others voluntarily to mutual benefit.

While many people think that others will continue to produce for no other reason than helping others, even if they have to turn over most or all of their earnings to the government, I think we will learn otherwise. Human nature, without a lobotomy, does not change all that much. People will do what is in their interest, though, they will lie through their teeth and tell you otherwise (or do it subconsciously).

Hence, the easy way guys like Geithner talk a good game about how those who are successful must pay more for the greater good, but all the while, cheating on his own taxes. For in our society, claiming to be for the collective is now in vogue. But perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way and the rights of the individual and capitalism will prevail. Crazier things have happened.